Last week, ACI participated in the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2020). Due to the on-going covid-19 pandemic, ASSETS was moved to a virtual format for the first time. We presented two publications, the prototype of a gamified haptic wearable and ongoing-work about accessible touchscreens for deafblind individuals – originated from the SUITCEYES project.

We are glad to share that during this year’s conference, our Keep Your Distance demonstration won the “People’s Choice Award” of the year. A special recognition was given during the conference’s closing ceremony. You can check the short video presentation here:

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ACI presentation and ASSETS2020 “People’s Choice Award” winner
Prototype of a gamified haptic wearable

The Keep Your Distance haptic wearable navigation system is a collaboration between ACI and the Swedish School of Textiles. The system was designed to be used in a navigation game where a user with deafblindness plays as a secret agent and another player is a suspect that should be followed. To win the game, the secret agent should follow haptic directional and proximity signals displayed around 180 degrees on the waist area and keep an optimal distance of 1.5 meters from the other player.

Ongoing work – Accessible touchscreens for deafblind users

In addition to Keep Your Distance, ACI also presented our on-going work on exploring materials for making touchscreens accessible to users with deafblindness. Pattern-based screen-locks are widely used but remain inaccessible for users with visual impairments. The work explored rapid prototyping for creating accessible pattern locks with materials easily found at home, such as cardboard paper, conductive paint and textiles. Attendees were impressed by our raw quinoa braille prototype!

If you are interested in reading our work, please find the references for the conference proceedings below:

  1. James Gay, Moritz Umfahrer, Arthur Theil, Lea Buchweitz, Eva Lindell, Li Guo, Nils-Krister Persson, and Oliver Korn. 2020. Keep Your Distance: A Playful Haptic Navigation Wearable for Individuals with Deafblindness. In The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’20), October 26–28, 2020, Virtual Event, Greece. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3373625.3418048
  2. Lea Buchweitz, Arthur Theil, James Gay, and Oliver Korn. 2020. Exploring Low-Cost Materials to Make Pattern-Based Lock-Screens Accessible for Users with Visual Impairments or Deafblindness. In The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’20), October 26–28, 2020, Virtual Event, Greece. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3373625.3418020